New Approach to Food Smell Analysis Using Combination of GCMS™ and GC-SCD (2)

Introduction

Gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GCMS), which has outstanding qualitative analysis capabilities, is used in smell analyses of food products, but because sulfur compounds contribute to the smell of food, even when present in trace amounts, detection by GCMS is difficult in some cases due to insufficient sensitivity and separation of sulfur compounds from other components. In this experiment, we studied a new approach to analysis of food smell by using a combination of GCMS, which is particularly effective for comprehensive qualitative analysis of odor components, and a GC device equipped with a sulfur chemiluminescence detector (GC-SCD), which enables selective and highly sensitive detection of only sulfur compounds. As the study method, using kimchi (Korean pickles), which has a particular strong smell among food products as the sample, we conducted an analysis of the odor components remaining in a container, in which kimchi had been stored, after washing the container with water.

February 14, 2020 GMT